The Long Song (30 page)

But July, skilled in the catching of rats, soon trapped this man within a corner. He held out his arm to keep her from him, as he kept repeating upon a panting breath, ‘My father, my father, my father,’ before finally completing the plea with, ‘My father would not approve.’

‘But your papa not here,’ July said softly.

‘My father,’ he carried on, ‘has the highest contempt for white men who abuse their position with negroes.’

‘Me is a mulatto, not a negro. It not be wrong, massa.’

‘My father sent me here to do good. He is a righteous man.’

‘Him will never know,’ July said, almost gaily. But when he glanced full upon her, July recognised the anguish stricken within this white man’s face.

‘I can see my father before me and I must not.’ He lifted up his head to plead heavenward saying, ‘I will not give in to this temptation, Father, I will not.’

And July, looking up to that same spot where he could see his papa said, ‘But there be no one there.’

‘Please go, Miss July.’

‘Your papa want you to be kind to negroes, massa.’ July said as she moved a long step closer toward him.

‘No, Miss July. Please leave now. Please, please, please, I beg you. You are too beautiful, you are too good . . .’ The rest of his words were muffled and lost as he covered his face with his hands.

It was now July’s turn to feel all her breath leave her. For this white man thought her beautiful. This white man thought her good. She lunged at him to catch him about the shoulders, for this prize was just too close for July to give up upon it now. But he pushed her off so fiercely that she nearly fell.

‘Please, Miss July, please just go now.’ Then clenching fistfuls of his own hair as if to wrench it from his head, he howled, ‘Help me, Father, help me, Father,’ before sliding down to sit in his corner and sob like a child.

 

 

 

 

R
EADER, I MUST WHISPER you a truth. Come, put your ear close to this page. Lean in a little closer still. For I am moved to speak honestly regarding the last chapter you have just read. Are you listening, reader? Then let me softly impart to you this fact. That is not the way white men usually behaved upon this Caribbean island.

 

 

 

 

A
FTER THAT DAY ROBERT Goodwin was forever watching July. She would find him at the garden’s edge, astride his grey mare—enthralled, motionless—as she, seated upon the veranda steps ate an orange and licked her sticky fingers. Never did he come close when the sun was high and never did he greet her by name. But she caught him in open-mouthed reverie gawping upon her swaying hips as she walked the long path through the stony provision lands to do her business there, secretly, instead of using the pit near the kitchen. And wherever he did chance her—within the garden, upon the veranda, crossing to the kitchen, walking a path—anywhere, anywhere, he did spy her alone, July would sense the overseer’s watchful pining. And, oh, how his blue eyes did gaze. Only the imagined commands from his tormenting papa did slap, shake, and rouse him to stop this foolish yearning and go about his day.

The overseer even surrendered his book to her—the one with the pictures of Scotch Land. July found it abandoned outside the door of her dwelling. And upon the pages where he had pointed so delightedly at her papa’s house lay three pink periwinkles, compressed thin as gauze, within its leaves.

Then, one evening after sundown when all the shadows were gone, July was walking back from the garden after collecting up the windblown pods from the tamarind tree when she heard a palm bush panting. ‘Miss July,’ was called with urgency. She turned to find her eye bedazzled by a candle lantern held high and swinging. She knew it was him, but strained to see his face as it danced in and out of shadow. He held out his hand in front of him, his fingers splayed with insisting, ‘Please stay quite still, Miss July, quite still.’ July parted her lips to speak but he commanded, ‘Please, do not speak.’

As she slowly lowered her arms to her sides, the handful of tamarinds she had collected scattered on to the floor. She planted her feet to stand as still as she might. Lifting her chin she stared into the lantern light. His hand upon the lantern held it so tight that the knuckles upon his fingers shone white as hens’ eggs. And although his face was lost to shadow, his gaze was so keen upon her that she felt it like a fingertip stroking.

It traced a line that brushed over her forehead, caressed her nose, touched the bulge of her lips and stroked her throat, before resting its phantom pressure upon her breasts. Then Robert Goodwin whispered, ‘This is wrong, I know this is wrong but I cannot help myself.’

Throwing the lantern to one side, he suddenly stepped forward to seize July about the waist. He was hot as the bread oven. July was puzzling whether to push him from her or close his embrace, when he threw her away. She stumbled. As she righted herself to stand before him she thought to shout, ‘Careful, me nearly did fall,’ but the sound of him weeping stilled her. She lifted her hand to find his face in the dark. His cheek beneath her touch was damp. At the feel of her fingertips upon him, the overseer placed his hand over hers. ‘It is against everything,’ he said, ‘But, Miss July, you must know that I have come to love you. I love you.’ And he softly kissed her palm before pulling away from her to vanish within the dark.

Yet it was to be a few weeks before July encountered Robert Goodwin again. Seated at the far corner of the veranda where a breeze occasionally blew the sultry still air with a little cooling, July was mending her missus’s undergarments—the ones where the rats had eaten out all the sweaty parts—when the overseer came from out the house and saw her.

July, thinking that the overseer would only stare upon her, for it was daylight and morning, lifted her eyes to gaze up at him, but continued to stitch the nasty garments. It was when his quizzical expression changed into a broad smile of recognition and he commenced to walk towards where she sat, that she, in astonishment at his approach, dropped the needlework over the rail of the veranda. He was soon upon her. He pulled her to her feet, then looked quickly around himself for somewhere to hide her, like she were some stolen booty, before steering her down the veranda steps and around the corner to shelter within the secrecy of a large clump of bamboo.

As they stood concealed together he lifted her face to meet his by placing both his hands upon her cheeks. ‘Look at me, Miss July. Look at me,’ he said. At once July began to pull away from his grip for the urgency within his tone startled her. But he held her face firm. ‘Listen to me, listen to me,’ he carried on, until the shock within her expression began to reach him. He let her go.

Blinking to look softer, smiling to look calmer, he stepped back and raised his hands to show he meant no harm to her. But his boyish excitement soon overcame him again when he said, ‘I have made a plan which I have just this minute set into action,’ and he squeezed her face once more. ‘Oh, Miss July, I have a plan that means we can be together. A plan,’ he went on, ‘so I might have you. A scheme that my father will have no quarrel with. Indeed, he will rejoice in it. He will thank God. I believe . . . I truly believe that my father will thank the Almighty for delivering his son from this temptation.’

Robert’s blue eyes were large as moons. For a long moment they stared down upon July—until, that is, he leaned forward to kiss her. His lips brushed so gently against July’s mouth that she became entranced by his sudden tenderness. She could think of no response to him. But the missus calling, ‘Marguerite, Marguerite,’ very close, soon ended July’s quandary. For she and the overseer sprang apart like beans upon a fire. And he, dropping to crouch low as a sneak-thief, began whispering, ‘Soon, Miss July, soon.’

He slipped away and out of all sight just as the missus rounded the corner to find July alone. ‘Oh, there you are, Marguerite,’ said the missus. July, now searching for the needlework she had thrown into the bush, began to babble to her missus about the breeze snatching the undergarments away from her, and how they flapped like some monstrous bird as they flew across the garden.

But Caroline Mortimer hushed her by waving her arms in front of July’s face. ‘Not now, not now, not now. No, no, no, no, no, there is too much to do,’ her missus squealed. ‘Oh, Marguerite, there is just so much to do.’ Then, with the aid of her fleshy fingers, each of those splayed digits struck in turn, the missus commenced to list the tasks that must be done. There was pink satin silk that must be found, blond needle lace that must be sent for, slippers that must be trimmed with ribbon, a gown with fashionable bishop sleeves that must be made. ‘And where are those yellow kid gloves?’ The pig must be slaughtered, all the chickens too, a cake must be baked, ‘But not by Molly’, cards must be printed, candles must be bought . . .

It was only July’s quizzical look that made her missus stop between breaths to ask, ‘What, have you not understood?’ Then, sighing hard, for the missus was quite winded with all this activity on such a hot day, she carried on, ‘Oh, I have not said.’ She giggled. ‘I have not told you.’ She laid her hand upon July’s arm. ‘I have such news, Marguerite. I accepted him just a minute ago.’ And she smiled broad, as she said, ‘I am to be married. I am to be married to Robert Goodwin.’